Winter 2nd, 512 AV – Shrine to Dira
It was a peaceful place, a place for much self-reflection and contemplation upon existence and one’s own place within its weave. She had never really taken much time to consider such things over the years, more interested with how to get to her envisioned proper place within its woodwork. She had spent years wondering how she could advance her cause, how to kill or otherwise destroy others, and sometimes even how to cheat her own death when it came. She had read the tales of mortals turned into deities, had held idle flights of fancy that she might achieve the same one day – romantic visions with no true basis in fact. Yet she had never sat and truly considered death , the meaning that it held.
There is wisdom in it, I can see that now as the years continue to tick away and pile up. Thirty soon, old for a Sunberthian perhaps she thought to herself as she sat, her back resting against a large log that she should have been using as a seat.
In her time living in the Spires she had grown far more reflective, her own position in the world at large made more inconsequential with every new portion of knowledge gained. She had known little of the various Gods and Goddesses before her visitation, beyond the basics that everyone seemed to know. She had known names, roles and sometimes the odd specific morsel of something or other. She had read much but conversation with the truly devout had proven to her that what she had read in books was more interpretive than fact. Interpretation seemed to be everything in the end, the difference between understanding and ignorance – even, it had been told to her, the difference between whether the God’s marked you as their own or not.
She had made the decision to gain as much knowledge after learning that nugget of information, the support of a deity something she could have really used over the years. Dira seemed the most appropriate to her, given the number of threads she had cut in her lifetime. She did not expect any favors from the Goddess, but knowledge was worth holding for its own sake. So it was that she sat there, legs crossed and hands resting lightly upon her bent knees as she regulated her breathing as she had been taught, as she had also learnt herself. She was getting better at the stillness, though she had a long way to go before she could even call herself competent at the skill – a very long way indeed.
“Dire brings peace, they say, perhaps she can bring a portion of it to my heart also,” she whispered, “in a strictly non-physical sense, of course” she added onto the end quickly.
She closed her eye and concentrated on her breathing, only her breathing, as she began to block out the world around her one sense at a time. It was a laborious affair for her, difficult beyond measure for one who was usually so involved in the world around her – the whispered secret, the feel of parchment, the smell of the whore’s perfume. Smell went first as she began to breathe through her mouth, lips gently parted and face muscles relaxed. Taste was a close second as she swept it aside, carelessly, and tried to move on to touch – very difficult for her indeed whilst the cold winds whipped across her skin. Her brow furrowed beyond her control as she sat, trying to access that fleeting inner peace.
